New patterns in residential burglary: The method of deadbolt lock picking

Abstract

This article examines the adaptability of burglars and tactical displacement in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, as part of an ‘arms race’ escalating in response to the sophistication of offensive and preventive measures. It describes the current method of picking deadbolt locks on steel doors inside apartment buildings, a procedure requiring a more complicated and collaborative effort. Following a Bourdieusian criminological reading determining the script and resources of a group of active offenders that function as criminal capital, this article reveals that recently, residential burglary has been displaced from the ‘outside’ to the ‘inside’ of multi-storey apartment buildings due to the proliferation of CCTV, alarm systems and spotlights. Ethnographic findings suggest that a decade ago burgling a residence was far easier for most offenders than it would be today, with numerous similarities in the script of offenders in the non-Western and Western contexts.

Introduction

Situational crime prevention (SCP) is a well-established approach in criminology, focused on the environmental causes of criminal events whilst practically aiming to reduce such opportunities (Clarke, 1997; Clarke and Hough, 1984; Cornish and Clarke, 1986). One of the more rigorous criticisms of SCP identifies a displacement effect inevitably resulting from crime prevention strategies inadvertently relocating crime from one place, time, target, offence, tactic, or offender to another, paving the way for the longer term adaptability of offenders (Ekblom, 1997, 1999, 2010). SCP researchers argue that the versatile competencies and capacity for improvisation shown by resourceful offenders allow for their adaption to preventive measures (Ekblom and Gill, 2016). This occurs primarily through ‘tactical’ displacement, describing changes to the longer term offensive methods used when commissioning crime (Ekblom and Pease, 2014).

This article examines the adaptability of burglars; principally, tactical displacement in Ankara, the Turkish capital, as part of an ‘arms race’ orbiting increasingly sophisticated offensive and preventive measures (Ekblom, 1997, 1999). According to the early 2000s findings of the author's paper determining longstanding methods of burglary (Mercan, 2019, 2020a), the use of alarm systems and CCTV was previously limited within Turkey. Historically, actual inhibitors or incentives depended on whether a flat was located at ground level or on an upper floor, whether there were window/door bars, or whether the window/door was made of wood or PVC. As narrated by offenders, burglary was an outside performance using a crowbar or screwdriver as the primary tool for jemmying open windows and padlocks (Mercan, 2019). Using data obtained through ethnographic research with a crew of professional active offenders, this article reveals that present-day residential burglary has been displaced from the ‘outside’ to the ‘inside’ of multi-storey apartment buildings, resulting from neighbourhood watch initiatives, an intensified awareness of strangers, and various risks and deterrents such as the rise of CCTV, alarm systems and spotlights sited in backyards.

Consequently, this article focuses on the latest method of burglary, göbekten alma [deadbolt lock picking], practised on the lock mechanisms found on the steel doors inside apartment buildings. It seeks to situate the SCP's recent concepts of ‘script’ (Ekblom and Gill, 2016; Cornish, 1994) and ‘resources for crime’ (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000) within Bourdieusian criminology's conceptual framework by arguing that once put into action successfully, through use by the offender as dispositions they are functionally converted into assets of criminal capital (Mercan, 2020a, 2019: 60–1; Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). The reason underpinning this theoretical integration effort is that by employing this criminal procedure, crew members can either pull off ‘big scores’ in the form of cash and jewellery whilst avoiding physical harm and arrest, transforming criminal resources or dispositions into material and symbolic gains or forms of capital (as vividly illustrated in prior papers Mercan, 2020a: 107–9, 2020b: 176–81). In what follows, I firstly outline critiques of SCP, displacement, adaptability and resources alongside Bourdieusian criminology. Following the methodology and data collection, I will present ethnographic data detailing the stages of preparation, selection, breaking, entering and departure scripts described by the research participants. Finally, I will point out a certain degree of displacement resulting from the move from outside to inside the apartment building, impacting target selection and the breaking and entering phases in metropolitan cities, as well as some similarities between the non-Western and Western contexts in view of the offender script.

Situational crime prevention, resources and displacement

SCP is a well-established, pragmatic approach in criminology focused on reducing any kind of opportunity for crime through redesigning the spatio-temporal environment. Whilst never holding the status of theory in itself, it is rooted in routine activities theory, residing under a tripartite umbrella of conditions comprised of the presence of a motivated offender, the suitable target and the absence of a guardian (Cohen and Felson, 1979), and from rational choice theory, which considers criminogenic behaviour to be the outcome of an offender's choices and decisions influenced by present opportunities in a given time and space (Cornish and Clarke, 1986). Such an analysis discounts the notion that offenders may be innately disposed to enacting certain behaviours, instead associating the agency of deciding to commit a crime to the pursuit of satisfying certain needs. A reasoned calculation of the anticipated effort, risk and reward are factored into carrying out crime, with the ensuing action stemming from an offender's immediate perception and awareness of situational opportunities and clues present in a specific setting or environment.

Disenchanted with offender-oriented approaches focusing on personal disposition, SCP originally placed a premium on explaining environmental causes of crime resulting in much easier and less costly preventive methods (Clarke, 1997; Clarke and Hough, 1984). Researchers have long suggested that environmental causes influence offenders’ criminal practices in addition to their choice of location (Bernasco and Koistra, 2010; Bernasco and Nieuwbeerta, 2005; Braakmann, 2017; Brantingham and Brantingham, 1995). Likewise, in Turkey, the topographical conditions and intrinsic architecture of multi-storey apartment buildings significantly affect the process of an offender casing and selecting their target alongside the type of preventive method used (Mercan, 2019). Given that SCP focuses on the offender decision-making process in terms of situational opportunities such as crime places, times, targets, offence types and tactics (Guerette and Bowers, 2009), an attempt to redesign a given environment encompasses measures for both increasing the risk and effort when practising crime and reducing its material and symbolic reward. These measures usually comprise reinforcing potential targets by improving locks, installing an alarm, surveillance technologies like CCTV, controlling access to restricted areas such as fences, barriers, enclosures (Bowers et al., 2011: 350), and biometric technologies (Pugliese, 2012). As we shall see below, these preventative measures have similarly achieved their goal in Turkey.

However, the main criticism of SCP focuses on the adverse effects of the aforementioned prevention methods that generate a process of displacement (e.g. Cornish and Clarke, 1987; Eck, 1993). Displacement of crime opportunities appears as ‘the possibility that criminals, blocked in their first choice of target, will try different methods of attack, seek similar targets at other times and places, or change to another target altogether’ (Ekblom, 1999: 27). Relatively recently, Guerette and Bowers (2009) defined displacement as ‘the relocation of a crime from one place, time, target, offence, tactic, or offender to another as a result of some crime-prevention initiative’ (2009: 1333). Despite some dispute as to whether displacement actually occurs (Bowers et al., 2011; Weisburd et al., 2006), Guerette and Bowers (2009) explicitly suggest that it tends to be a short-term phenomenon whilst adaptation a longer term one. Debates around displacement introduce the potential for considering offenders’ resourcefulness, adaptability (Ekblom, 1997, 1999) and expertise (Nee, 2015) when faced with crime prevention methods. Adaptation underlines the capacity of offenders ‘to evolve, learn and upgrade’ against different and increasingly sophisticated deterrents (Ekblom, 1999: 38). Expertise operates through ‘habitual, gratuitous and largely unconscious decision-making’ (Nee and Ward, 2015: 5), acting rationally whilst casing, selecting targets and finding cues whether to offend following a certain cognitive script (Clare, 2011; Nee et al., 2015; Nee and Meenaghan, 2006). Taken together as part of displacement, adaptability and expertise explain a wider spiralling process whereby offenders’ adaptative methods and their renewal of scripts for overcoming current preventive measures leave crime preventers constantly readjusting their equipment and defence devices. What Ekblom (1999) terms an ‘arms race’ is an unintended consequence of crime prevention strategies that ‘shape’ offenders to make them ‘more adaptable or specialised, more violent or less confrontational’ (Ekblom, 1999: 42).

Given criminology's ‘aetiological crisis’ (Young, 1997) that oscillates along the outer edges of a spectrum – between Lombrosian reductionism and fully-fledged rational agency – the actuality of criminal behaviour should occur at some point in between. Seeking to link situational and dispositional perspectives, Ekblom and Tilley (2000) argued that ‘the offender is not merely a decision agent, one who acts on those decisions, solving particular problems by applying resources with a particular modus operandi’ (2000: 380). In this regard, the authors argue that offenders may hold a form of cognitive script and the ‘resources for crime’, including personal ‘strength, nerve or risk preference, agility, dexterity, intelligence, charm, persuasiveness, leadership’; cognitive resources such as ‘how to commit a crime’, ‘how to overcome some impediment to crime such as an alarm, or how to quietly lever out the panes of a double-glazed window’; and moral resources such as having ‘alternative moral precepts’ and justifications to neutralise guilt or shame (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 382). These describe ‘the offenders’ core competencies for crime’, alongside facilitatory resources such as screwdrivers, guns and crowbars, and collaborative sources like criminal subculture through which offenders can construct teams or crews with diverse skills and capacities (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 382–383).

The Bourdieusian reading of the resources for crime

Ekblom’s (2010) valuable attempt at integrating SCP by conjoining criminal opportunity theory with dispositional theories of crime resonates with and contributes to Bourdieusian criminology's efforts to account for crime and criminality through Bourdieu's theory of social practice, using its conceptual framework of habitus, capital and field. Briefly, Bourdieu sought to understand and explain the nature of social practice by observing the sedimentation of bodily and mental dispositions trained by exposing and being exposed to the extant milieu (habitus), and their valorisation in various embodied forms as an asset (capital) within the social space of struggles for certain material and symbolic prizes (field) (Bourdieu 1977, 1990). This socially individuated trajectory of agents across these fields (sports, academia, politics, or art) is shaped by the volume and composition of capital (Wacquant, 2007).

Similarly, Bourdieusian criminology perceives the street as a field of struggle where theft and burglary are judged by its agents according to a ‘realistic prospect of success’ to gain rewards and avoid harm competing with others (Sandberg, 2008: 158). Dependent upon the prospect of acquiring prestige and prizes, street-criminal cultural fields become antagonistic social spaces in which the potential for skilful criminogenic action earns material and symbolic rewards for the players in the game (Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). In this antagonistic space, criminal capital generally refers to ‘the type of human capital…[that] includes knowledge and that can facilitate successful criminal activity’ (McCarthy and Hagan, 1995: 66). Although Ekblom (2010) lacks such interest or awareness, the so-called offender resources – personal, cognitive, moral, facilitatory and collaborative – are widely observed in ethnographic studies and are conceptualised in the literature of Bourdieusian criminology under the rubrics of ‘street capital’ (Harding, 2014; Ilan, 2013; Sandberg, 2008) or ‘criminal capital’ (Mercan, 2019; Steffensmeier and Ulmer, 2005). Almost all researchers emphasise that which Ekblom (2010) designates as resources to also pertain to those offender dispositions converted into criminal capital through action within the street–criminal fields. For instance, whenever an offender successfully commits a crime by employing some of these resources, the conversion of bodily and mental dispositions (habitus) into criminal capital occurs in the aftermath of managing preventive measures before seizing a profitable ‘score’ (Mercan, 2019, 2020a).

The link between the resources for crime and their functions (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 383–5) underscores the actualisation of potential, or in Bourdieusian terms, the valorisation of habitus in the form of capital, where and when burglars adapt and utilise personal expertise to improvise new scripts and methods for overcoming crime prevention measures. In what follows, we examine one form of offender adaptation in the urban context of Turkey called deadbolt lock picking.

Methods and data collection

For this research on professional crime as a part of my doctoral study, I obtained ethical clearance in Autumn 2013 from an ethics committee in the University of Kent at Canterbury in the UK.

The presented data was gathered in Ankara over eight months between February and September 2014 as part of ethnographic research conducted around a drug enterprise in a slum district of Ankara and in the Etlik neighbourhood of Keçiören, another lower-class district in the capital. Etlik was the neighbourhood of my gatekeeper and research participant, a career criminal and drug wholesaler who lead a burglary crew featuring youths drawn from the local lower classes. As the research covered both a drug enterprise area and the gatekeeper's neighbourhood, I spent approximately four months, from around mid-April to the second week of August, in his residential locale socialising with the youths around him, particularly his crew members and their peers. During that period, I organised unstructured interviews with Etlik youths, made participant observations and recorded field notes about their neighbourhood here conferred the pseudonym of the Walkway.

My research gatekeeper was a childhood friend with the pseudonym of Juba. The process of data collection was therefore rendered possible by the good rapport and trust within our relationship, allowing me to interview his more recent crew members Yıldo, Ero, Rüzgar and Cafu (all pseudonyms). All five were men residing in the Walkway during the research. At the time, Juba was 33, with the rest aged between 20 and 25 years. Juba, Ero and Cafu were Kurdish; Yıldo a Lazi from the Black Sea and Rüzgar a Turk from Central Anatolia. All possessed criminal records, had experienced time in prison at least once, and used cannabis and chemical substances like ecstasy and cocaine. Their criminal records consisted of burglary and theft, with the police having only arrested Juba and Cafu because of their drug trade activities. I was able to conduct interviews with Juba, Yıldo, Ero and Rüzgar several times, but only once with Cafu. The length of these interviews varied from 0.5 to 3.5 hours and occurred within the recreational area of the Walkway where local youths spent considerable time. Towards the end of the fieldwork, I was able to conduct a focus group discussion, allowing for their deliberations and collective self-reflexivity on matters relating to crime and criminality. Similarly, they allowed me to record and later transcribe conversations verbatim into Turkish, with the transcripts coded and translated into English where necessary. I have selected the following supporting data extracts and fieldnotes because they are representative of the wider data set.

A case of an arms race and displacement: The method of deadbolt lock picking

The method for picking the well-secured lock mechanisms on steel doors inside apartment buildings developed because of displacement. Juba calls this ‘göbekten alma [deadbolt picking]’, superseding an older technique widely known as kapalı [closed], askı [hanging], or kış işi [winter job] requiring the pulling/breaking of window bars and jimmying open the frames with the help of a crowbar or screwdriver. The new technique also provides the opportunity for reaching upper floors which if using the older askı method would otherwise be inaccessible. There are two reasons mentioned for abandoning the longstanding method: firstly, the proliferation of CCTV, spotlights and alarms, and secondly, the increased awareness about burglary by the public. Juba describes this as follows:

The difference between 1999 and 2007 is that cameras [CCTV] multiplied. So did alarms. And people come out on [hearing] a tiny little creak or a light flashing through a window… it wasn't like that in the past. For example, we’re walking through a garden; when somebody was out [and asking] ‘what are you doing here?’ – ‘We’re peeing or smoking [a cigarette]’ [response]. Or else we’re pretending to sit down, literally, we used to sit down in that alley and smoke cigarettes. A man was sitting on the balcony, whereas we’re smoking. He never said [something] because there was not that much burglary. Well, people supposed that the youths of the neighbourhood sat down to smoke. It was like that in the past. But now if you’re walking past a building and looking around, he frets about it.

Juba

Juba's account highlights the displacement of crime opportunities in Turkey, illustrating a situation whereby burglars can no longer easily move around an apartment because of the evolving sophistication of security measures (Ekblom, 1997, 1999; Ekblom and Tilley, 2000). Juba's adaptation and improvisation of deadbolt lock picking can be considered in the context of the arms race further developing preventative measures around apartment buildings. With the widespread use of bank cards enveloped by technological crime prevention creating diminishing returns, Juba with his partners began focusing on maximising jewellery rather than cash quantities:

There was a good deal of money in the past. And it was easy. Nobody reckoned you were a burglar. Why wouldn't they? There wasn't that much burglary. Everybody used to have money and save it easily in the bedroom. No money now! I went out [to prison] and understood that this system was old!

Juba

In the new circumstances, Juba had to adapt and change the method. However, as ‘adaptation often involves knowledge spread’ (Ekblom, 1999: 39), this occurred in collaboration with his older brother, Justo, another infamous [gayrımeşhur] thief. Juba's reasoning for changing the burglary method reflects the five forms of displacement taking place (Guerette and Bowers, 2009: 1333). Accordingly, the initial tactical displacement seems to have made way for other such parameters, including:

Tactical: altering the method previously employed. He began by picking the lock mechanism with an adjustable spanner and entering flats during daylight. The new method was highly sophisticated and risky as it required working inside buildings and carrying a lockpick that could quickly open the deadbolt.

Temporal: changing the crime time. He first shifted his work hours in 2010–2011 from the evening to the morning and early afternoon, 9 am to 2 pm. When a building had CCTV installed making concealing himself difficult in broad daylight, Juba once again shifted his work hours to the nighttime.

Spatial: through tactical change targeting more affluent neighbourhoods, having been previously indifferent.

Target: focusing on the inside of apartment buildings rather than outside, utilising new methods.

Offender: replacing the members of his crew with new ones.

First through tactical displacement then on to the others, Juba managed to adapt himself and his peers to avoid the risk of arrest whilst making lucrative scores, or by converting his resources/dispositions into economic capital. Next, I examine how they successfully offend.

Juba’s personal and collaborative resources

Offenders may possess some ‘personal capacities’ facilitating criminogenic actions, such as ‘nerve’ or ‘risk-preference’, ‘agility’ and ‘dexterity’ (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 382). Juba acquired these traits earlier in his personal trajectory as a youth taking leisurely strolls around the neighbourhood in 1994–95. Once he saw an open window, he would reach in through the bars to grab anything precious. He often used a piece of wood or similar tool to manoeuvre items within reach; he managed to seize mobile phones and purses on many occasions. In so doing, he learnt basic methods of breaking and entering on a trial-and-error basis, whilst also teaching his peers (Mercan, 2020a: 100–3). Checking for a left open door, shoving a window further open, and kicking in doors all formed part of an education centred around research and development. Juba's criminal character for burglary thrived, and he developed a habitual engagement with window poles, balconies and door handles. This would be reinforced during his numerous prison experiences, leading to him reshaping the desired attributes of his crew members regarding new break-in techniques.

However, we can also count ‘charm’ and ‘leadership for co-offending’ as personal resources (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 382). Juba's criminal career provided him with an allure and respect among his peers but also flexibility through his expanding criminal social networks (Mercan, 2020c). The latter generated a collaborative resource from which Juba could pick out members of his crew with ‘an appropriate skill-mix and capacity’ (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 383). In between January and September 2014, Juba assembled a crew selected from a pool of offenders, with each member's involvement flexible and intermittent. Eko, from prison and other illegitimate circles, joined Juba's crew as a lookout. The highly skilled burglar Rüzgar, recruited after a meeting in a nightclub, also accompanied Juba's operations. Declared as an expert in disarming alarm systems, Uto sometimes accompanied them. His only fixed member was Ero, his older sister's son who resided with him. Despite this relationship, Ero's movement into a criminal life was not directly linked to being Juba's nephew. Instead, the Walkway street cultural networks had early introduced him to burglary and crime as work:

I was unemployed in the Walkway, first hanging out with Yıldo.

Q: When?

2012. We’re hanging about in the café. He was just out of prison. He said, ‘let's go to work’. I said, ‘let's do it’. We did it then. Later I promised I would never do it again and I just quit. I was working in a car park or industrial estate. Then my uncle [Juba] heard of [my involvement]. He said he was going to work. I myself said that strangers should not come with you, I would keep you company. We have been together since then.

Ero

Ero's account indicates how widespread collaborative resources and networks are in the street cultural field of the Walkway (Mercan, 2020c: 6–9). The Walkway youths find criminal opportunities and collaborations in these networks where the unemployed and poorly educated tend to socialise with criminal role models like Juba. Cafu further explains the extent of criminal groupings among these disadvantaged youths:

The well-offs hang out together, so do the poor with each other. Sometimes the well-off also join, though quite rare. What happens? When he's not well off, he wants to do something, to hang about, to drink, yet has no money. What is he doing then? For example, he goes to the store and steals… One, two, then you continue like this, you see the life become normal [to you], I mean, a person turns out to finally be a master auto mechanic from the apprenticeship, don't they? This [theft] becomes a profession similarly. Then you see life goes on like that.

Cafu

Sustained in the environment Cafu articulates, Juba never encountered difficulty finding the required human resources and so never missed a chance for a lucrative score. When and where necessary, he procured extra support for safecracking from the likes of people like Bear (pseudonym). Bear was a strong, tall guy well known as an infamous criminal who owned a truck and the equipment capable of dealing with safes of any size. Juba was also familiar with trustworthy fences for electronic devices and jewellery. By maintaining a large network of human resources, Juba collectively controlled not only the internal division of burglary tasks but also its ‘external organisation’ (Shover, 1973: 501). Obviously, he could easily change the combination of his crew in response to unexpected circumstances by collaborating with offenders to form a flexible organisation, sometimes ‘outsourcing’ certain criminal services (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 387). In April 2014, Rüzgar was caught red-handed climbing up to a balcony whilst under the effect of a psychoactive drug and Eko fell under criminal investigation whilst involved in the drug trade after he was mentioned to the Narcotics Bureau by a buyer. In these circumstances, in the summer of 2014, Juba began working with two neighbourhood youths, Yıldo and Cafu, to compensate for the loss of his experienced crew members. Juba regularly and systematically worked in this period but using a different method, as I will detail below.

Facilitatory resources: Preparation

Physical resources help offenders carry out crimes. With burglary, these can be simple tools like screwdrivers and crowbars, but can sometimes entail cars, guns, knives, false identity cards, masks, explosives, welding equipment, ladders and mobile phones (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 382). The first difference in Juba's burglary organisation was that he continually rotated the car he drove for work. During fieldwork, Juba would rent a car and regularly exchange it for a different one, never using his own car during this time unless strictly necessary. Juba's networks provided him with the ability to take this extra precaution. They kept a toolbox buried in the boot of the rented car, containing a screwdriver, crowbar, adjustable spanner and an exclusive lockpick. However, the deadbolt picking technique required the crew to carry a larger toolbox in the form of a mechanic's bag, the carrying of which Juba assigned primarily to Ero or Rüzgar. The size of the bag would attract attention, presenting both an advantage and disadvantage; whilst they believed those observing them would assume they were a mechanic and therefore on their way to repair something, the bag was heavy and cumbersome making any potential escape difficult. Besides this, a gun also stood as an integral component of the toolbox. Eko would hold the responsibility of carrying the gun whilst staying outside performing the lookout role. The use of a weapon appeared to be for scaring and intimidating witnesses, if necessary, as the new method required breaking and entering inside apartment buildings.

Cognitive resources: Target casing, breaking, entering and departure

To convert resources/capital into economic/material gains, burglars must learn how to case a target and assess risk, effort and rewards. This is a complex process requiring organising a division of labour, bypassing alarm systems, entering quietly, knowing where to find valuables, detecting clues suggesting concealment and even planning escape routes in case of danger (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 384). This is exactly where cognitive scripts kick in and operate (Nee, 2015), their significance shaping how ‘offenders acquire, develop and evolve procedural competencies as resources for committing crime’ (Ekblom and Gill, 2016: 330). The conversion of competence into performance is a distinct moment in valorising resources/dispositions as an asset or criminal capital. In the following, I will detail how the crew became successful in their operations, avoiding risks and ‘taking scores’, through scripts regarding the selection of a neighbourhood and flat, to breaking, entering, and eventual departure.

The selection of a target neighbourhood

Juba organises his life and crew relations around crime time, starting about 5 pm during winter and over particular days. Having assembled his three-to-four member crew, as its leader, Juba decides where to go. Target selection in this ‘new system’ is entirely different from that of the ‘old’ askı and kapalı method discussed elsewhere (Mercan, 2019), which was quite arbitrary and dependent upon considerable physical performance in the backyards of buildings. Instead, the new method of entry demands less physical effort outside but is much riskier inside, leaving intruders open to any possible physical encounter or even confrontation with residents. Being visible whilst entering a multi-storey apartment building contradicts the general preference of burglars who usually intend to remain disguised and unseen (Bernasco, 2006; Coupe and Blake, 2006; Palmer et al., 2002). However, as the participant accounts suggest, they offer opportunities for extremely good scores. This method facilitates entering upper floors, allowing the crew to target affluent areas and homes ranging from luxury apartment blocks in the city centre to villas in the recently developed southwest of the capital. Upon arriving at the agreed area, they usually parked the car two or three streets away, parallel to the target. As always, before leaving the car, as their fingerprints are held on police records, the members put either socks or gloves on depending on the season.

The selection of the target flat

The search for a target occurs in the street by looking at the upper floors of apartment buildings. The narratives indicate that the crew were unconcerned by passers-by or visibility from other properties because they no longer suspiciously enter the backyards of apartment buildings. Unlike the arbitrary choosing process of the old method (Mercan, 2019: 52–3), this decision process depends upon Juba's criminal insight as to which flat is wealthier, with richer pickings than the others.

We’re looking at curtains and the beauty of the house [to decide] which one is beautiful. That is better for us. I mean critical in the sense of richness. Whose curtain is more beautiful, or which one has colourful patterns in front of the door or flowers? Which one?

Juba

Rüzgar further clarifies how they get to understand whether the flat owner is wealthy or not:

For instance, big wardrobes are installed [inside], once you enter, [you see] the bedroom is so different. Everything is so different.

Q: Do you understand this from furniture or chandeliers?

Well, brands, chandeliers, paintings, curtains, sofas; [it] all makes a difference… For example, I can't picture it very well right now but once you’ve entered the master bedroom, for example, the owner has luxurious lights installed as such, you see? For example, there is an LCD TV in the bedroom. Or there is a steel safe inside. Normal people don't have such things in the bedroom. There is no LCD, no ornamental lightings, no safe; [the bedroom] is in no way as beautiful.

Rüzgar

Juba's decision process and Rüzgar's reflection – through both decoration and indicators of wealth – demonstrate the burglars’ perceptions of affluence (Bernasco and Luykx, 2003; Bernasco and Nieuwbeerta, 2005; Hakim et al., 2001; Nee and Meenaghan, 2006). As Juba has continued to commit burglary over many years, his criminal insight functions as a form of capital allowing him to intuitively distinguish the affluent flats from the supposedly poorer. However, deterrents such as occupancy are more likely to affect their decision.

Now, this new system has sprung up, deadbolts [yuvarlak göbekler]; both flats [on that floor, the target and that facing] should be vacant. Formerly, when the lock was straight if only the one side were empty, it wouldn't have been significant… Both flats [now] should be vacant as [breaking] makes [a] noise. When I see both flats are vacant, I immediately send a friend to check left and right. He looks left and right. Vacant! He also checks the back façade. He says no light. Afterwards, I send him inside [the apartment building] and make him open the front door. He looks [at] the number. What number are these flats? Because when you enter you know the storeys, the first floor, or an upper floor of the first Whichever is the one we’ve looked at, he goes up [to] that floor and checks its number. He then goes down and presses the doorbells, both of them. Four times five times each. If no one responds, then you go up again. You press the doorbell up there again. [Some]one might not open the door! Let's press it again, does any sound come from inside? Maybe [some]one sleeps inside. Or [some]one doesn't want to open it. Or [some]one might be foreign. Because this happens a lot. I have my guy press twice, at least; then he texts me an empty message. We’re moving on. We don't have anything on us. Only one of us takes a mobile phone.

Juba

The occupancy of the target is of primary concern to Juba and his crew, like any other burglars; thus they ring the doorbell before entering to make sure a residence is empty (Hakim et al., 2001; Nee and Meenaghan, 2006; Palmer et al., 2002). The crucial part of this selection process seems to be the necessity of finding a single storey comprising a pair of similarly vacant flats – one of which is a suitable target. Having identified the appropriate flat, Juba opens the front door of the apartment building by sliding a medium-sized plastic card similar to cards put under a coaster. This operation takes little time as the door is swiftly opened once he lodges the card between the front door and its frame. If this does not work, another technique is simply to push the door from the lower part by foot until the latch becomes loose and breaks off. He then organises a division of labour, positioning Eko as a lookout in the apartment building, whilst taking the other two, Ero and Rüzgar (and later Yıldo), along with him.

Breaking

Following a script, the swift execution of physical, bodily tasks requiring both agility and flexibility and mental tasks like ingenuity and alertness are crucial for breaking and entering. The activity becomes a learning process, with this acquired knowledge proving a highly valuable form of asset/capital:

The older generation has seen something and developed it over time. For example, there is a door we couldn't break into. Well, we know lots of things but can't open it anyway…Now we’ve seen from Juba abi, [he says] look ‘this is done like that!’, then you see the job. Well, from whom do you see it? From the older generation.

Yıldo

Juba describes his valuable knowledge of the stages of breaking and entering as follows:

After pressing the bell, we go up if there is no one [there]. One of my friends stays slightly [lower] down on the stairs, another sticks something on [the spy hole on] the opposite door. There is sticky, yellow stuff besides combis. He removes and sticks it [into the spy hole on opposite flat]. Or he turns around [to block the spy hole], as one may glance by chance if someone is inside. It's quite remarkable. After dealing with that, I begin breaking in. I’m pushing using my hand on the upper side of the door. Is the top part locked? If so, I check the other part. If it's locked, I open the lower first. If the top is already unlocked, I never open the upper.

Q: Can you tell me how you open it?

I stick the screwdriver in. There is a keyhole just inside the bolt [round shape]. There is a mechanism inside turning around it. I break it… I put the black system [exclusive lock pick] in to use immediately, a device. I insert the gadget into the mechanism [of the deadbolt]. I do this fifteen to twenty times up and down, up and down. When I do it, the screws fastening it [inside the deadbolt mechanism] are warmed up. When it gets warmed up, the door automatically goes off! A sudden noise like ‘bang!’ goes off and we take [off the inside mechanism]. After taking it off, a lock mechanism is there. I pull it off with an adjustable spanner. After I have pulled it off, other mechanisms come out that we need to work on. If the mechanism inside comes out together with the lock we have broken, then we have another system kick in. If it's not broken or dropped off – has instead stayed fixed – I open the mechanism using a straight screwdriver.

Juba

Deadbolt picking is a highly sophisticated and risky procedure; however, Juba claims that breaking the new lock mechanism on steel doors never exceeds five to six minutes. Juba can swiftly operate the device by using a short series of actions; his expertise and impulsive usage seem to occur both automatically and unconsciously (Nee and Meenaghan, 2006; Nee, 2015; Nee et al., 2015). He developed such skill over many years of experience in the field of burglary throughout which he has persistently committed break-ins. Consequently, his skilful use of the lock pick has become his particular criminal capital, professionalising the entire operation.

Burglars are alleged to work in cooperation with friends and family members (Bernasco, 2006; Hochstetler, 2001; Rengert and Wasilchick, 2000), and similarly, deadbolt picking appears a collective effort. Whilst Juba is working on the steel door, other intruders such as Ero, Rüzgar, or Yıldo help him break in. At this point, a series of actions follow automatically and swiftly among the crew members, with individual conative and cognitive structures occurring harmoniously. During the focus group conversation, they likened this process to a ‘surgical procedure’ with devices swiftly exchanged person to person, requiring the collective use of conative skills. When Juba needs an adjustable spanner, it is immediately provided by another member who in turn takes from him the exclusive lock pick. This process repeats itself when he needs other devices – for example, a screwdriver. During these item exchanges, the crew members execute the task promptly through immediate compliance with Juba's requests. Where to stand, what device to lend, how to support and what comes next all appear a part of performing proprioceptive skills disciplined and refined through training and exposure during countless events (Wacquant, 2014).

Alarms are a universal security measure used for deterring burglars from the decision to break in and for thwarting an ongoing attempt (Cromwell et al., 1991; Hakim et al., 2001; Wright and Decker, 1994). Disabling an alarm system emerges as a major deterrent that Juba overcomes by exploiting his wider network, absorbing intermittent members into the division of labour. Activated alarm systems require a professional burglar to either understand how to deal with them personally or retain a specialist on board able to solve the problem. Juba's summertime business is concentrated around the villas in the southwestern part of the capital. During the fieldwork, he often mentioned that alarm systems were installed as standard on the villas, and are also beginning to appear in apartment buildings. Juba is supported by his friend, Uto, who can disable such systems: inside the building, they sever the alarm cable connected to a separate apparatus. Having detected an alarm system installed on the outside façade of a building before a job [teşhisli iş], Juba's crew will bring a bucket of water. After cutting the line inside, they dismantle the main box and submerge it in the water; once the internal mechanism is saturated, the signal dies. Juba's social networks allow him access to anyone able to provide technological and specialist support to deal with a variety of deterrents, fashioning a collective division of labour.

Entering and departure

Having entered a residence, the criminal script for searching a property holds similarities with the recorded dispositions of burglars in the West (Cromwell et al., 1991; Rengert and Wasilchick, 2000; Wright and Decker, 1994), as Rüzgar explains:

Whoever is practical, speedy, knows the job best and can do it silently and calmly, he opens the door. I mean if there are two, if two guys are going to work, one has to stay outside the door so that the intruder won't be caught. He must alert [ayıktırsın] him so the other can get out quickly.

Q: Where do you first go directly after entering?

Master bedroom.

Rüzgar

Juba describes the process at length:

Once opening the door, we enter the flat. One person stays out[side]. Two people go straight into the bedroom, another one ransacks, [looking] for laptops, other kid's rooms, the saloon, and somewhere like that. Once we’ve entered the master bedroom, I directly automatically control the dressing table and a section of the mirror where the woman keeps her valuables, as I don't trust most people. Though my crew is all right, I often say this section is mine so you guys look around other areas. The other person present in the room – plus one person more – ransacks the wardrobe, bedside tables, and under the bed. Some people build up a private section in backboards. No one realises it but as I’m following new things and technology, I find those hidden parts. For example, when you slide the backboard [aynalık], the secret boxes come out into the open where gold sets and other precious things are hidden.

Q: Have you ever found this?

Sure. I will show you new wardrobes. But you take the drawers, nothing in it. But when you push and slide the upper part, then the mechanism automatically comes out, [revealing] an empty space. After ransacking, I go out. I ask other friends if there is somewhere left. Nothing. Afterwards, I go to my friend ransacking the saloon and other rooms. I ask him the same again if anything comes up. If he says he had looked at this but that has remained, then all of us do another operation on that part – laptop, a cool plasma telly like ”4–5000.

Juba

As in the West, cash, jewellery and electronics are the crew's preferred valuables (Nee and Meenaghan, 2006; Palmer et al., 2002; Rengert and Wasilchick, 2000). Instead of crudely ransacking the master bedroom, Juba proclaims his technological knowledge for unearthing the hidden sections in wardrobes where precious metals and jewellery may be concealed. The qualitative difference in the content of his scores is evident in how Juba has begun taking electronic devices such as laptops and plasma TVs, a consequence of the decline of cash returns.

Having finished one job, if no cash or jewellery has been found and if they have remained undetected and the building is still quiet, Juba's crew turn to the opposite flat.

We finish the inside then go out. We just press the bell on the opposite side. We try to take the opposite [flat] by the same system. Ha, if there is movement in the apartment, we don't take it. But when it is so silent and comfortable, we take the other side.

Juba

In this method of burglary, the lookout's task carries a greater burden and responsibility as the work is performed inside the apartment building. Juba selects only his boldest and most trustworthy friends for this position:

Sometimes the task of the lookout is to hold our equipment, and there is also a gun on him. We have a tear gas spray, sometimes on me, sometimes not. When someone is coming from downstairs, the task of the lookout is to press the doorbell. Once the bell is rung, we run away altogether… I always say to [the lookout] to immediately press the bell of the flat if someone comes from upstairs or downstairs. When the bell rings, we immediately understand the danger… Once getting out [of the flat], if we see someone coming from downstairs, all together [we] automatically walk downstairs, two by two, arm-in-arm, chatting. When we’re down [at] the front door of the building, and we have left the building, we disappear down the street by running away. That person might be the owner of the flat we broke in and come back down, so we disappear… We run straight into the vehicle. We then go off.

Juba

When using göbekten alma [deadbolt picking], the escape options from inside apartment buildings are fewer than those available when using the askı [hanging] technique in backyards. In the event of danger, Eko and Juba note that weapons are not intended for direct use but are instead employed for intimidating possible preventers or interveners (Ekblom and Tilley, 2000: 384). Unless confronting a direct attack, the crew tries to handle any encounter with residents by using social skills rather than brute physicality. This is utilised to overcome any suspicion and by keeping a ‘conventional appearance’ (Katz, 1988), projecting calm and natural behaviours. The collective movement of the crew functions to ease any potential dialogue with the apartment's inhabitants.

Discussion

Situational crime prevention is no longer an approach purely focused on the offender's decision making process but has now become better integrated with dispositional perspectives on crime (i.e. Ekblom, 1997, 1999, 2010). This is because offenders not only form judgements but also act, adapt and revise their criminal methods to overcome prevention measures. This causes a displacement of crime opportunities and in turn, the further sophistication of crime prevention strategies, producing an arms race.

In this debate, this article has made three specific contributions:

Ekblom and his colleague's identification of SCP's lack of attention to offender disposition and their suggested resources for explaining a successful offence have permitted their argument's integration into Bourdieusian criminology. This article introduces a Bourdieusian reading of offender resources for crime forming a criminal capital – or facilitating material and acquiring symbolic gains from crime whilst avoiding risk and arrest.

The article demonstrated that displacement and adaptability are evident in the non-Western context of Turkey. Despite the current lack of data, the findings of this ethnographic research on a group of active offenders indicate that CCTV, spotlights and alarm systems have displaced criminal opportunities, causing offenders to improvise an updated burglary method termed deadbolt lock picking. In this so-called new method, we can observe a certain degree of displacement resulting from the move from outside to inside the apartment building, impacting target selection and the breaking and entering phases in metropolitan cities. By comparison, a decade ago burgling a residence would be much easier for most offenders than today because burglary was mostly an outdoor performance executed in and around the gardens and backyards of apartment buildings (Mercan, 2019).

The findings also allow for comparison between the non-Western and Western contexts in terms of the offender script; with many observable similarities when casing a target such as attention to visibility, perception of affluence, occupancy, attention to alarms, and once entering the flat, a searching priority focused on the master bedroom and cash and jewellery.

Currently in Turkey, it seems that offenders possessing enough resources (capital) can adapt both themselves and their methods to new crime prevention measures. However, this is an endless process escalating indefinitely. Since completing this study, new methods of break-in may have begun to be exercised, accelerating the arms race. There is an explicit need for more offender-based research and data in Turkey, not only within different metropolitan cities but also across the various categories of crime. Future studies of this sort will reveal a more vivid illustration of criminal procedures across the diversity of crime but also permit us to make a meaningful comparison regarding the extent that offender script and the use of resources function as criminal capital between the non-Western and Western context.